Chinglish
This comedy of cultural and linguistic conflicts by award-winning playwright David Henry Hwang (“M. Butterfly” and others) opened on Broadway in 2011; Berkeley Rep staged the West Coast premiere in 2012. The play was updated in 2015 to represent changing U.S. relations with China, as San Francisco Playhouse notes in the advance publicity for its upcoming production.
Chinglish itself is, of course, that familiar and often hilarious broken English that shows up most often in various instruction manuals of products imported from China with awkward direct translations from the Chinese language. In Hwang’s play, an American businessman (played here by Michael Barrett Austin) arrives in China hoping to work out a good deal for his company, but confounding differences — everything from customs to language — interfere. Hwang has said that he thought of writing the play when he toured an arts center in China — impressive except for the absurdly translated signs in English.
San Francisco Playhouse, 450 Post St., SF. May 4-June 10. Tickets: $15-$100. (415) 677-9596,